Decade After Iraq WMD Speech at UN, Ex-Powell Aide Lawrence Wilkerson Debates Author Norman Solomon

DemocracyNow.org - Ten years ago this week, a defining moment occurred in the Bush administration's push to invade Iraq. On February 5, 2003, then Secretary of State General Colin Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council. His message was clear: Iraq possessed extremely dangerous weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein was systematically trying to deceive U.N. inspectors by hiding prohibited weapons. A decade late, we host a debate between Powell's former aide, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson -- who prepared the UN speech, only to later renounce it -- and media critic Norman Solomon, author of "War Made Easy."

"I don't believe the hype about that having been the ultimate presentation that led us to war with Iraq," Wilkerson says of Powell's speech. "George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and others had decided to go to war with Iraq long before Colin Powell gave the presentation. It added to the momentum of the war. ... Frankly, we were all wrong. Was the intelligence politicized in addition to being wrong at its roots? Absolutely." In response, Solomon says, "We were not all wrong. Many experts and activists and researchers from the get go in 2002 were saying that the administration case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was full of holes. ... So now to say, 'Well it wasn't just us at the administration, other people believed it' -- people believed it because they were propagandized by the administration with massive assistance from the mass media."

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